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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 451 records · Page 25
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DOE OSTI2024

A Prototype Software to Demonstrate a Data Catalog for Hanford Environmental Datasets

Ensuring that data on long-term environmental remediation at the Hanford Site is high-quality, traceable, and easily accessible is an ongoing challenge, complicated by decades of data collection, multiple contractors maintaining data sources, and the wide range of data types. A centralized data catalog, known as the Hanford Environmental Information and Data Index (HEIDI), has been under development as part of the Hanford Environmental Data Management (HEDM) program to address these challenges. HEIDI fulfills a critical need to bring together a wide range of data types and sizes from multiple authoritative data sources, while documenting the data pedigree and quality information (i.e., traceable to the data source/originator). This document describes additional development and maturation of the HEIDI prototype. Key accomplishments included deploying the catalog software, Esri Geoportal Server, on a server accessible to Hanford Local Area Network users, conducting cybersecurity evaluations, investigating integrated authentication solutions, and conducting functional testing of the catalog prototype. The server-based deployment enabled targeted feedback, leading to enhancements including improved accessibility features and an expanded metadata schema. Specifications for the server-based deployment of the prototype catalog and the HEIDI metadata schema are provided in this document to support subsequent HEIDI deployment by the U.S. Department of Energy Richland Operations Office.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Radiological Monitoring Plan for the Oak Ridge Y-12 National Security Complex: Surface Water

DOE Order 458.1 requires that dose estimates consider contributions from all facilities. In the Y-12 Radiological Monitoring Plan (RMP), surface water is monitored at points that reflect individual facilities, as well as at points that reflect the combined contributions of all facilities. This monitoring plan does not consider other potential routes (i.e., airborne releases and food chains). Thus, a complete determination of total effective dose (TED) cannot be made based on this plan alone. The other routes from Y-12, and all routes from other DOE facilities on the Oak Ridge Reservation (e.g., Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and The Heritage Center), must be considered in order to satisfy DOE Order 458.1 requirements. Determination of TED from all sites and pathways is done through the use of dose-assessment models and is documented in the Annual Site Environmental Report. This monitoring plan provides adequate monitoring goals for Y-12 surface water releases to provide input of sufficient sensitivity and accuracy to reliably determine the Y-12 surface water component of the TED. The routine radiological monitoring program is designed to monitor effluents at four types of locations: (1) treatment facilities, (2) other point and area source discharges, (3) instream locations, and (4) production building roof run-off. With this sampling and analysis program, data will be obtained on primary point sources as well as on locations that represent the composite of other potential sources. This plan will be reviewed periodically to determine necessary modifications to the sampling frequencies, parameters, and locations. Modifications, if any, will be based on the analysis of the previous data and its effectiveness in satisfying the objectives of this plan. Appendix A contains graphs of the sum of the DCS fractions for locations and frequencies contained in a previous version of this plan. The data was collected from January 2009 through December 2019. Each sample was analyzed, and each result was divided by the appropriate DCS to compute a DCS fraction. These fractions were summed for all isotopes. According to DOE –STD-1196-2011, the annual average of these sums should be below 1.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

SCALE Calculations Replicating ARH-600 Data

This report documents Standardized Computer Analyses for Licensing Evaluation (SCALE) calculations replicating data from the ARH-600 criticality handbook. These calculations complement those reproduced with MCNP in PRC-NS-00009. Calculations were performed with SCALE version 6.1, using the v7-238 cross section library. The original ARH-600 data were calculated by the Atlantic Richfield Hanford (ARH) Company starting in the 1960s, and Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) calculations were performed by the Hanford Plateau Remediation Company in 2010. This report is not intended to replace final analysis of fissile systems by qualified criticality personnel.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

National Hurricane Program Metrics Framework

The need for metrics for planning and response measures was identified as key gap to be addressed in the National Hurricane Program's (NHP) Technology Modernization effort. This document proposes a framework for defining a set of metrics for planning and response that will be implemented in the NHP products of hurricane evacuation studies (HES) and post-storm assessments (PSA). To determine the feasibility of this framework, a survey of current HES and PSAs was carried out followed by and then used to determine if the proposed metrics are currently captured. While there is a wide variety in data availability and detail, the implementation of these metrics is not only feasible but presents an opportunity to improve on current practices. The final implementation of this framework shall require the ongoing feedback from local, state, tribal, and federal stakeholders.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

A case study of tuning MapReduce for efficient Bioinformatics in the cloud

The combination of the Hadoop MapReduce programming model and cloud computing allows biological scientists to analyze next-generation sequencing (NGS) data in a timely and cost-effective manner. Cloud computing platforms remove the burden of IT facility procurement and management from end users and provide ease of access to Hadoop clusters. However, biological scientists are still expected to choose appropriate Hadoop parameters for running their jobs. More importantly, the available Hadoop tuning guidelines are either obsolete or too general to capture the particular characteristics of bioinformatics applications. In this paper, we aim to minimize the cloud computing cost spent on bioinformatics data analysis by optimizing the extracted significant Hadoop parameters. When using MapReduce-based bioinformatics tools in the cloud, the default settings often lead to resource underutilization and wasteful expenses. We choose k-mer counting, a representative application used in a large number of NGS data analysis tools, as our study case. Experimental results show that, with the fine-tuned parameters, we achieve a total of 4× speedup compared with the original performance (using the default settings). Finally, this paper presents an exemplary case for tuning MapReduce-based bioinformatics applications in the cloud, and documents the key parameters that could lead to significant performance benefits.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Abstract Machine Models and Proxy Architectures for Exascale Computing

To achieve exascale computing, fundamental hardware architectures must change. The most significant consequence of this assertion is the impact on the scientific and engineering applications that run on current high performance computing (HPC) systems, many of which codify years of scientific domain knowledge and refinements for contemporary computer systems. In order to adapt to exascale architectures, developers must be able to reason about new hardware and determine what programming models and algorithms will provide the best blend of performance and energy efficiency into the future. While many details of the exascale architectures are undefined, an abstract machine model is designed to allow application developers to focus on the aspects of the machine that are important or relevant to performance and code structure. These models are intended as communication aids between application developers and hardware architects during the co-design process. We use the term proxy architecture to describe a parameterized version of an abstract machine model, with the parameters added to elucidate potential speeds and capacities of key hardware components. These more detailed architectural models are formulated to enable discussion between the developers of analytic models and simulators and computer hardware architects. They allow for application performance analysis and hardware optimization opportunities. In this report our goal is to provide the application development community with a set of models that can help software developers prepare for exascale. In addition, through the use of proxy architectures, we can enable a more concrete exploration of how well new and evolving application codes map onto future architectures. This second version of the document addresses system scale considerations and provides a system-level abstract machine model with proxy architecture information.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Summary of CTF Modeling and Numerical Improvements for Boiling Water Reactor Simulation

This report documents geometry and numerical improvements made to CTF for the modeling of boiling water reactor (BWR) geometry and operating conditions. These activities are part of a larger program to extend the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) to better support BWR modeling and simulation. The activities documented in this report added features to CTF, including support for mixed-fuel cores, modeling of the upper plenum, and modeling of the lower tie plate form losses. A review of the spacer grid modeling approach was also performed, and a plan was discussed for future improvement. The parallelization of the model was improved, leading to a roughly 2× improvement in CTF runtime and a 1.6× improvement in total VERA runtime. An in-depth review of the governing equations and their linearization was performed and is documented in this report. Once implemented, this new linearization will allow CTF to take much larger timesteps, leading to more significant reductions in CTF and VERA runtimes.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Procedure for Creating, Reviewing, and Submitting Input Files into the Benchmark Library

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has a number of criticality benchmark input files, modeled for use with MCNP, developed and maintained by various organizations including the Nuclear Criticality Safety (NCS) Division, XCP-3, and XCP-5. The purpose of this procedure is to standardize input file creation, review, and maintenance. This procedure incorporates existing practices used by IRSN as documented in the original report and the translation from French in addition to practices used by the LANL NCS Division as documented in. The report relates to input files used for the validation of the continuous energy Monte Carlo code MCNP6 but is general enough to be extended to other codes. This report describes the procedure on how to prepare and use benchmarks (taken mainly from the ICSBEP Handbook) for the validation of calculation routes. In particular, this report describes the procedure to follow in the creation of the input files and their integration in the experimental validation databases.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

TAUOLA update for decay channels with e + e – pairs in the final state

With the arrival of high luminosity B-factories like the Belle II experiment, τ decay measurements have become more precise than ever, allowing rarer processes to be explored, and finer details of τ decays to be studied. These are important to understand the spectrum of intermediate particles produced in τ decays. Therefore Monte Carlo generators, like the TAUOLA program, have to facilitate precision analysis as well as confront new models that constantly emerge with the availability of high statistics experimental data. New decay channels and models may lead to large variation of matrix elements size within the available phase space, as in the case when e + e - pairs are present in final state. It requires appropriate presampler of the phase space generator and a proper documentation to help users introduce their own models. While releasing a new update, it is important for the TAUOLA Monte Carlo library to maintain the general structure of the previous versions to preserve backward compatibility. The aim is to minimize changes from the user perspective. Finally, this paper presents a demonstration of new models implementation facilitated by the current update.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Machine Learning for Automated Metadata Assignment in Buildings: Cooperative Research and Development (Final Report, CRADA Number CRD-18-00767)

RealTerm Energy and NREL have identified a shared vision to evaluate opportunities to facilitate the organization and assignment of metadata to building control system (BCS) data via industry-informed machine learning (ML). Manual metadata assignment is labor intensive and costly, slowing down any Energy Management and Information System (EMIS) deployment in the building space. This project aims to develop methodologies to accurately assign this metadata and significantly decrease the level of effort associated with deploying EMIS. The objective of this project is to identify/design methodologies to assign metadata to HVAC control points automatically. The identified methodologies will be programmed in analytics algorithms so they can ingest a list of points and produce a detailed tagging following the Haystack classification nomenclature. To validate the efficacy of each methodology, tagging results will be compared utilizing a list of points extracted from RealTerm's building database-as well as data extracted from the NREL campus via the Intelligent Campus program-enabling testing against large datasets with real world challenges. The developed methodologies may leverage building manager/operator input on a limited basis to add context to the classifying algorithms. The partnership aims to advance global efforts in areas related to the DOE missions through improving operational performance of commercial buildings. It is well documented that buildings fall out of commission after they are occupied, wasting significant energy and incurring associated costs simply due to poor operational performance. Emerging EMIS technologies that perform continuous commissioning help to address this issue, yet integration of these systems can be labor intensive both for the technology vendor and the building owner/operator. This project will enable more efficient and cost-effective analytics for buildings, enabling improvement in building operations at lower cost points.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

ORNL Package Testing Program Software Quality Assurance Plan

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Package Testing Program (PTP) uses commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software in performing data collection of thermal test results for package designs that contain radioactive materials. Specifically, this software is used to collect temperature data from the furnace, packages, and ambient air to prepare and execute the thermal test specified in 10 CFR 71.73, “Thermal Test.” This software quality assurance (SQA) plan sets forth the guidelines, standards, and procedures that shall be used to provide SQA for PTP software applications. This is a living document that will be maintained for the lifecycle of the PTP program. The SQA plan follows the requirements set forth in ORNL Standards Based Management System (SBMS): Information Technology; Subject Area: Software Quality Assurance. When applicable to the requirements as described in ORNL SBMS, Software Quality Assurance, the software shall be listed in the ORNL Software Registration System (SRS). Exemptions to this SBMS are COTS and firmware that are not modified; spreadsheet applications and personal productivity tools that do not have a utility or safety application, research applications, legacy software, system software, vendor-supplied software used to interface with the vendor’s services, software used within the organization to facilitate processing or management of information, and software developed for applications not specific to the US Department of Energy (DOE).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

The History of MCNP and about 20 Related Programs

The history of the MCNP code is a long and complicated one that touches a huge number of other software packages over the decades. This document will attempt to place the direct lineage of the MCNP code into a single document and track the people who worked on and around the software. This report is necessarily incomplete. The author only has access to the LANL archives, which have gaps in key areas. Speculation will be used to fill gaps where necessary. It is hoped that future revisions will have more detail than this report, especially as others come forward with their knowledge. The history will be broken into a few segments. Sec. 1 will go through the low-energy history from MCS to MCNP version 4. In Sec. 2, the history of high-energy physics from Oak Ridge’s NTC to MCNP version 6 will be discussed. Sec. 3 will go through some important notes to complete this history. Finally, Sec. 4 contains a chart of the lineage of the code.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cybersecurity Framework Profile for Electric Vehicle Extreme Fast Charging Infrastructure

This document is the Cybersecurity Framework Profile (Profile) developed for the Electric Vehicle Extreme Fast Charging (EV/XFC) ecosystem, including the four domains that relies on the ecosystem (i) Electric Vehicles (EV); (ii) Extreme Fast Charging (XFC); (iii) XFC Cloud or Third-Party Operations; and (iv) Utility and Building Networks. This Profile utilizes the NIST Cybersecurity Framework Version 1.1 and provides voluntary guidance to help relevant parties develop Profiles specific to their organization to understand, assess, and communicate their cybersecurity posture as a part of their risk management process. The Profile is intended to supplement, not replace, an existing risk management program or cybersecurity standards, regulations, and industry guidelines that are in current use by the EV/XFC industry.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Fiscal Year 2024 Software Quality Assurance Activities for the ARC Software

The continued goal of the ARC SQA project in the Advanced Reactor Technologies program of DOE is to resolve the QA gaps for the ARC software that limit, or prevent, commercialization of the software for industry users. This project started in earnest in fiscal year 2023 which saw the entire code system moved from a SVN repository to a GitLab repository and an associated software quality assurance plan (SQAP) developed and ratified. Most of the QA gaps in the ARC software were identified in collaboration with industry partners and work begin in fiscal year 2023 and continued in 2024. The primary documentation that is missing includes user manuals, user guides, software verification reports, and code coverage assessments. The SUMMAR manual was completed this fiscal year and work was started on creating manuals for SE2ANL, SE2RCT, and DASSH. Software verification work was carried out for DIF3D and REBUS in a previous program and the current fiscal year saw the completion of software verification reports for GAMSOR, GAMSRC, VARPOW, EvaluateFlux, and SUMMAR. The goal for the next fiscal year is to complete the PERSENT software verification work and begin planning the software verification work for DASSH, SE2ANL, and SE2RCT. The code coverage reports for DIF3D and MC2-3 were completed in the previous fiscal year and the goal is to generate code coverage reports for REBUS, GAMSOR, PERSENT, and DASSH in the coming fiscal year. A considerable amount of effort was spent in the current fiscal year working on the continuous integration capability for automated regression testing in GitLab. The first version of the testing was created in the previous fiscal year and applied to DIF3D and its utility programs. That testing was extended this year to cover GAMSOR, REBUS, and PERSENT. To accomplish this, the first version of the new testing methodology had to be updated to make a single output checking methodology viable for all of the ARC software. This will result in a single document to detail the automated regression testing methodology and minor documents to detail the tolerance settings that have been applied to the output for each ARC code. The previous methodology put into place with SVN would have required a separate document for each ARC code to detail the output checking methodology and the tolerance settings for the output from each code. Because some of our industry partners are providing funds to add new capabilities to the ARC software to meet their needs, all of which must be reviewed and approved by the SQA program funded by this project, a summary of that development work is detailed in this report. Overall progress on resolving the QA gaps has been good this year with the most impactful improvement for our industry partners in capability being the creation of a threaded version of DIF3D-VARIANT that allows the DIF3D, REBUS, and GAMSOR run times to be reduced by a factor of 4-6. The most impactful QA gap that was resolved was the software verification of GAMSRC and VARPOW.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Primer for OTERR Core Reloading Optimization

OTERR (Optimization of Test Reactor Reloading) is a software tool which assists in finding optimal fuel assembly reloading patterns for nuclear reactors. It was created specifically to support the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) program, but its functionality is general enough to be applied to most fast spectrum reactors which use hexagonal prismatic fuel elements. This document is meant to be a primer for new users of OTERR to walk through example workflows for core reloading optimization cases. Simple cases are followed step-by-step to discuss what needs to be done to complete a reloading optimization sequence. Note that the intent of this document is to provide practical examples for users to follow along with so they can quickly start using OTERR and then make changes to fit their own modeling needs. Detail is limited in terms of addressing additional features not used in these examples and especially lacking in discussion of theory used in the code. To better address these points, users are highly encouraged to refer to the OTERR User Manual and the OTERR Theory Manual.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2021

CMM Sequential Analysis Program

This report documents a design agency (DA) method to evaluate coordinate measuring machine (CMM) data by constructing an algorithm that is equivalent to the production agency (PA) algorithm for processing the raw CMM data. Several refinements of the CMM analyses were implemented at both the PA and the DA to process inherent limitations of the raw data, such as the absence of measurements at the exact ends of the connector-adapter assembly (CAA) and the recovery from these limitations through (worst-case) adjustments to the the positional errors. Also, inherent errors of the CMM measurements were accommodated by introducing a guard band, which effectively lowered the tolerance so that the CMM code could not pass bad parts. The DA and the PA showed remarkable agreement in all areas of analysis. The ultimate comparison is shown in Figures 13a and 13b, where the effect of using a guard band and end adjustments to the CMM measurements were clearly shown.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Paradigms and Challenges for Deterrence in Cyberspace

In 2018 Sandia National Laboratories launched the Civilian Cyber Strategic Initiative, an ongoing multi-year effort to characterize future threats to civilian cyber infrastructures, to inform research and development efforts to detect, attribute, counter, and recover from cyber attacks, and to inform program and capability investment decisions across the Energy and Homeland Security portfolio at Sandia. One of the primary objectives of the Civilian Cyber Strategic initiative is to leverage Sandia's systems analysis capabilities to characterize future threats and to support a new theory of deterrence. Towards the goal of supporting a new theory of deterrence in cyberspace, the purpose of this study was to understand how new and existing deterrence paradigms can be applied to cyberspace, to identify unique challenges and pitfalls associated with deterring adversaries in cyberspace, and to develop preliminary ideas for how our ability to deter cyber adversaries might be improved. Our approach combined literature reviews of relevant policy documents and the academic literature with interviews of experts both at Sandia and beyond.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-T-27: A Tool for Routine Quality Assurance of Radiotherapy Dose Calculation Software

Purpose: Dose calculation software is thoroughly evaluated when it is commissioned; however, evaluation of periodic software updates is typically limited in scope due to staffing constraints and the need to quickly return the treatment planning system to clinical service. We developed a tool for quickly and comprehensively testing and documenting dose calculation software against measured data. Methods: A tool was developed using MatLab (The MathWorks, Natick, MA) for evaluation of dose calculation algorithms against measured data. Inputs to the tool are measured data, reference DICOM RT PLAN files describing the measurements, and dose calculations in DICOM format. The tool consists of a collection of extensible modules that can perform analysis of point dose, depth dose curves, and profiles using dose difference, distance-to-agreement, and the gamma-index. Each module generates a report subsection that is incorporated into a master template, which is converted to final form in portable document format (PDF). Results: After each change to the treatment planning system, a report can be generated in approximately 90 minutes. The tool has been in use for more than 5 years, spanning 5 versions of the eMC and 4 versions of the AAA. We have detected changes to the algorithms that affected clinical practice once during this period. Conclusion: Our tool provides an efficient method for quality assurance of dose calculation software, providing a complete set of tests for an update. Future work includes the addition of plan level tests, allowing incorporation of, for example, the TG-119 test suite for IMRT, and integration with the treatment planning system via an application programming interface. Integration with the planning system will permit fully-automated testing and reporting at scheduled intervals.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗